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1 Terabyte Optical Storage Disks

fenimor writes "Physicists at Imperial College London described a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD. Maybe it won't be as large, as 100TB holographic optical storage, but still should be enough to fit every episode of The Simpsons on one disk. Dr Török, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015."

266 comments

  1. Surprise surprise... by Power+Everywhere · · Score: 5, Funny

    1,000 gigabytes of data and the only application you can think of is the Simpsons?

    *sigh*

    1. Re:Surprise surprise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Can't wait. I'll finally be able to fit my entire pr0n collection in one suitcase.

    2. Re:Surprise surprise... by Mouse42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      haha.. you made me laugh so hard and suddenly, I ended up in a painful coughing fit!

      I think it was the "sigh" at the end.

      Well then. Name some other uses other than condensing one's movie collection, and massive backup.

    3. Re:Surprise surprise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they're just using the "simpsons" as a degree of comparison, einstein

    4. Re:Surprise surprise... by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah, it's a joke, but every show plus the never-aired "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" fits on 7 dual layer DVDs. Think bigger.

      If only you did need 1 terabyte to store Family Guy...damn cancellation.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    5. Re:Surprise surprise... by HeDa · · Score: 1

      well.. I have found other applications with my current storage disks...Here is a picture of the sculpture, because when those 1 Terabite disks arrive I won't be able to do anything with my old disks... lol

    6. Re:Surprise surprise... by Toresica · · Score: 1

      Yeah...

      I plan to keep Star Trek on mine when I get one. :p

    7. Re:Surprise surprise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually I just downloaded the DivX encoded set of every episode including "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" and it fits in just over 7GB of hard disk space. And it still looks better than it ever looks when I watch it on cable TV!

    8. Re:Surprise surprise... by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      I thought they were bringing back Family Guy?

    9. Re:Surprise surprise... by BeerCat · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah, funny and all that.

      But. Back when a "word processor" was merely a glorified typewriter, those with a floppy disk attached were advertised as being able to hold most of the Bible (or some such) - a reference point that most people were aware of, even if they'd never opened a copy. However, these days, you can pick up a pdf that's less than 3Mb, so you need to think bigger. Looks like The Simpsons is the new cultural reference...

      --
      "She's furniture with a pulse"
    10. Re:Surprise surprise... by spear39 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      That just be enough space for the compressed version of M$ windowsof the time.

    11. Re:Surprise surprise... by Mastadex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Simsons are bit of a relief from the usual 'library of congress' or ' minutes of music'

      --
      A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
    12. Re:Surprise surprise... by Darth23 · · Score: 1
      Forget pr0n

      I'll finally be able to put all my mp3s on 1 disc.

      --

      -------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.

    13. Re:Surprise surprise... by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1

      Speak for yourself!

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    14. Re:Surprise surprise... by techwolf · · Score: 1

      At last, the new Return of the King special, extended, directors, enhanced, platinum widescreen, anamorphic, boxed set, collectors edition (second release) will be available with 500 hours of never before seen footage! And still span 2 discs!

      --
      I don't do this for karma, I do it for cash. It's much better.
    15. Re:Surprise surprise... by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
      By then the 1000mp cameras will be out and you'll only be able to store 300 poorly shot family photos on it.

      Or the latest version of Windows will be able to still fit on just a single disk.

    16. Re:Surprise surprise... by raarky · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      how about finally being able to fit redhat onto one disk?

    17. Re:Surprise surprise... by Eric119 · · Score: 1

      1000 gigabytes? I think you meaneth 1024 gigabytes.

  2. Get yours before they're gone! by coupland · · Score: 5, Funny

    >the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015.

    Which means EB Games should start taking pre-orders right about now...

    I keed, I keed....

    1. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Komi · · Score: 1, Insightful
      >the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015.

      5 to 10 years! 1 Terabyte won't mean diddlypoo by then. Remember Moore's Law?

      --
      The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
    2. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Null537 · · Score: 4, Funny

      And their listed release date is Feb. '05

    3. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 5, Informative

      What does it have to do with hard drive storage?

      Moore's law is an empirical observation stating, in effect, that at our rate of technological development and advances in the semiconductor industry, the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months.

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
    4. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Moore's law concerns the number of transistors on a die, although drive capacity does follow an exponent law, but at a different rate.

      It seems that it takes about ten years for hard drive capacity to multiply by ten. That means a doubling of drive capacity approximately every three years. By 2010, there might be 1.6TB drives. By 2015, people might be buying 5TB hard drives. A 1TB optical disc might not be too bad during that time frame.

      The problem is that many of these projects die in their infancy. The last big one I remember was Constellation 3D's FMD, but I really wasn't sure the claimed material science of flourescents / phosphorescence was real on that one, it was hard to distinguish it from a fully vapor project.

    5. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by WPIDalamar · · Score: 2, Funny

      But they'll have an "Anticipated Ship Date" of next year =/

    6. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Mr+Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What's this have to do with transistors and circuits?

      Remember Moore's Law?
      Do you?

    7. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think your numbers are a bit off. In 1994, I purchased a 340MB drive for about the same price a 4OOGB drive costs today... that's a factor of 1000, not 10. Yes, bigger drives existing back in 1994, but they were on the order of 2GB and $2K. That's still a huge factor.

      Hard drive capacity doubled every 24 months before the discovery of the magnetoresistive effect. After the discovery of the giant magnetoresistive effect, the growth cycle sped up yet again to its current 9 months.

    8. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Epistax · · Score: 1, Redundant

      You can buy a 500 gb harddrive now. I think it's cooler to call it 0.5 TB. Anyway I don't see anything wrong with expecting it to go up 50 to 100 megs every six months. Not only that but the bottom line prices are plummeting. 200 gb is down to $95 according to pricewatch. What I forsee happening is a real rift between performance vs storage harddrives.

    9. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by TTK+Ciar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, hard drive storage densities are increasing much more quickly than that.

      I've been tracking hardware price trends for a few years, and hard drive data densities have increased exponentially, but on a changing exponent.

      From the late 1980's to the mid 1990's, the rate was about 1.6x per year. Around 1996 the annual rate of increase climbed to 1.8x, then 2.0x, to a peak of about 2.2x/year until the "dot bomb" around 2001, which knocked it down to 1.4x for a while. It has since climbed back up to about 1.6x/year. (I'm not sure why the dot-bomb had this effect.)

      If we assume, naively, that it will continue to increase at a mere 1.6x/year, then we should be seeing 6+ TB hard drives by the year 2010, easily. That is, imho, a conservative estimate.

      On the other hand, there are any of a number of things which might change the commodity hard drive market (for instance, the advent of thumbdrives which are "good enough" for the masses, leaving only the corporate market for hard drives). So pop some popcorn and pull up a lawnchair, and we'll see what hapens.

      -- TTK

    10. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by doormat · · Score: 1

      Maybe not. If you haven't noticed, so far this year there havent been many announcements regarding larger HD sizes. We went from 300GB to 400GB, and its nearly October and 400GB drives still aren't shipping in volume (ie not at BB, CC, Newegg, ZZF, etc). The rapid pace of Desktop HD capacity increases has slowed considerably. Stuff like laptop HDs can now hold 100GB, and SATA has arrived, but the mainstream storage drives havent gone up that much this year... last year, I figured we'd have 500GB drives by the end of 2004, but its looking like that will not happen. Maybe Q2-2005, most likely Q3-2005... I'm still thinking 1TB will mean a lot by 2010.

      --
      The Doormat

      If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
    11. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't think it was so much the dot bomb, but that people had already downloaded all the MP3s they wanted, or at least had a disk big enough to do so in the forseeable future.

      20-100GB is enough for most people's MP3 collection, and I think that is really what drove that boom in hard disk size increases we saw from 1996-2001.

      MP3 really was the killer app driving hard disk sales during that period. During the couple years before that, they were driven by people wanting to run Windows 95, maybe with an online service, and realizing their hard disk was really too small for windows and/or the other shareware crap they wanted to download.

      Really the software is what is driving the hardware, when it comes to something like memory and hard disk capacities. Stuff like CPU speed is something you can never get enough of, but hard disk and memory are the kind of thing that, if you have enough, you have enough.

      --
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    12. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by jilles · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ten years ago I had a 80 MB harddrive in a 486, I think you are about a factor 10 wrong here since my current pc came with a 80GB drive two years ago. The pc before that had 40GB (I bought it in 2000) and before that 4GB ('97), before that 210MB ('95). If I'd buy one now it would be 160/200 GB so that would be about twice what you'd get two years ago. See the trend?

      So if you extrapolate to 2004, 100x 200 GB is about 20TB in 2014. 2010 I'd expect about 5TB. The 1TB harddisks should appear around 2007/2008. That is all assuming the growth trend remains the same which is debatable.

      --

      Jilles
    13. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by VagaStorm · · Score: 1

      Thos marketing ppl wouldn't by any chance be the same that anounced that half life 2 would be out in the fall of 2003? :D

    14. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      If not semiconductors, what controls that there hard drive as well as the data transfer method between it and the rest of the computer?

      Even Commodore 64s had drive logic.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    15. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      By that logic, a quantum computer is trivial to build because we have a CRT monitor to plug it into.

    16. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by imsabbel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think the next big thing for HDs will be tivo like devices for HDTV. For normal TV, 250 or 300GB discs are fine, but if users want their current experience with 1080i, there will be a market for 1 or 2 TB discs.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    17. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by snooo53 · · Score: 1
      What I forsee happening is a real rift between performance vs storage harddrives.

      I think you're on to something there. In the desktop market though, there's always the RAID possibility to keep prices low. That is, I don't see an equivalent-sized performance drive becoming prohibitively expensive since you can always RAID two or more together. Now, with laptops, and low power devices that's rarely an option so I could definitely see a huge disconnect between performance desktop HDs and laptop drives

      --
      The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
    18. Re:Get yours before they're gone! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think it was so much the dot bomb, but that people had already downloaded all the MP3s they wanted, or at least had a disk big enough to do so in the forseeable future.

      Wasn't that either... because digital video editing hit the scene back around 2000-2001 with a lot of people getting into DVD creation in 2002-2003. Video storage is driving a good bit of demand, and a lot of folks are re-ripping / re-gathering their audio collection using lossless codecs. Not to mention corporations that are generating gigabytes worth of data daily that need to be kept online and accessible.

      The problem is that manufacturers have hit a bit of a wall at the moment, and it's proving very difficult/expensive to build platters with higher densities. (Hitachi's 400GB drive is merely more platters in an existing shell rather then fewer, higher density platters.)

      300GB drives have been out for a *long* time, relatively speaking, compared to past advances (we went from 40GB to 250GB rather quickly in comparison). 400GB drives were announced last fall and are *barely* in the market almost a year later.

      Last I heard, there's some promising ideas, but nobody has put anything into the market that breaks the current gigabytes/platter barrier. The market is obviously there (given how fast 300GB drive sell out), there's just no product to sell.

  3. wow by diggum · · Score: 5, Funny

    So with this technology, we could get the complete, directors cut version of each of the Lord of the Rings movies onto 3 disks? Awesome!

    1. Re:wow by Dasaan · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for Tolkien's cut to be released.

      --
      XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
    2. Re:wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a brave one betting that the complete director's cut will be finished by 2010...

    3. Re:wow by sahonen · · Score: 1

      ...As raw uncompressed frames.

      --
      Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
  4. Just in time by TrueKonrads · · Score: 4, Funny

    For Duke Nukem Forever release...

    --
    Lone Gunmen crew.
    1. Re:Just in time by FinestLittleSpace · · Score: 1

      This is becoming one of those Slashdot-isms isn't it.

      Seriously, when the fuck is that game coming out?

    2. Re:Just in time by cdrudge · · Score: 2, Funny

      Shortly after Doom 3...oh wait. I can't use that one anymore.

    3. Re:Just in time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Shortly after Half-Life 2 then?

    4. Re:Just in time by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "For Duke Nukem Forever release..."

      It can hold Longhorn! *Giggle giggle, snort snort* That joke never gets old!

      Okay, back to work. Oh crap, I can't find my 5th RedHat disc...

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  5. Weaseling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...storing up to one Terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD. Maybe it won't be as large, as 100TB holographic optical storage...

    "Maybe"? Really, now - I think you can confidently commit yourself to the proposition that 100 > 1...

    1. Re:Weaseling by maxwell+demon · · Score: 0

      Maybe he's speaking about physical size :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:Weaseling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Nah, those are metric TB.

    3. Re:Weaseling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He was obviously talking about "Holographic optical" storage being different from regular optical storage. As in, more advanced...

    4. Re:Weaseling by Mr+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      But does it hold up for very large values of 1?

    5. Re:Weaseling by feloneous+cat · · Score: 1

      You are not logged in. You can log in now using the convenient form below, or Create an Account, or post as Anonymous Coward.

      And for the old farts, does this mean 1 is no longer the loneliest number?

      --
      IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
    6. Re:Weaseling by winterlens · · Score: 1

      This actually is a use of the word "maybe" that should tickle the linguists among us. I'm not much of one, but it is interesting to note the use of a conditional ("maybe") with what is obviously not conditional.

      Perhaps the author is attempting to address a perceived flaw in the 1 TB disk by saying, "Well, hey, it won't store as much as your 100TB dream disk, but at least you won't break your eject button when you're trying to watch the Simpsons."

      Just a guess, though. Maybe I'm wrong.

    7. Re:Weaseling by Kehvarl · · Score: 1

      Or for very small values of 100?

  6. Wait till a standards body gets a hold of the tech by havock · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once the physicists give their product to the DVD Forum/Alliance, we can expect uncompatible competing formats to delay wide adoption of this technology for the next 7 years after it is launched.... so goes life.

  7. How appropriate by jakuis · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...should be enough to fit every episode of The Simpsons on one disk.

    How appropriate. I can already hear anti-piracy people say D'oh!

    1. Re:How appropriate by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, the article doesn't state that there's a recordable version. Indeed, given that it relies on not just the size, but on fine details of the pits, I could imagine that making a recordable version of that quite hard at the least.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:How appropriate by Ubergrendle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Seriously, once you can start getting 10 seasons of DVD quality material onto one single disc, it ~really~ puts things in perspective. I see two good things coming out of this:

      1. Licensing non-sense for legacy audio-visual media goes away. Napster/Gnutella is a 60lb weakling compared to the Gorilla of 1 terrabyte optical storage. At today's prices, it makes sense for me to fly from Toronto to California, burn a few TV series of shows onto a disc, and fly back home -- it would be cheaper. Also, broadcast TV really beings to lose its luster when I have 20,000 hrs of video sitting on its shelf at home. I have 500 channels today, and its 99% garbage. I'd be much better off buying the shows i like in a static format, but the price point isn't quite there yet.

      2. A new boom in television and film, as the new resolution and storage capacity gives way to much more impressive presentation. No one will be buying season 1 of The Simpsons when they can buy FAMILY GUY 3D in HDTV2.

      Of course I'm wildly optimistic, and am not considering media conglomerate consolidation activities, DCMA III: Son of Thurmond, and media format wars. But on the whole I think the latent capability of the media will be strong enough to defeat corporatisation.

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    3. Re:How appropriate by JesseL · · Score: 1

      Somebody has to be able to record them. Don't they? It just may not use a laser recording process like CD-R/RW, so the recording (or pressing) equipment just might not be inexpensive consumer level stuff like we have for CDs and DVDs.

      --
      "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
    4. Re:How appropriate by RicktheBrick · · Score: 1

      The stars of friends will still want 10 million per episode so if the sell a million copies that is 10 million divided by a million time 238 or $2380 a disk. They would have to sell a hundred million to get the price low enough. Seriously the cost of the material of one disk would be way more than anyone would want to pay. The only way they could sell them is to divide them into 400 segments which people could open up later upon paying a smaller amount for each segment.

    5. Re:How appropriate by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No one will be buying season 1 of The Simpsons when they can buy FAMILY GUY 3D in HDTV2.

      Just like nobody buys old black and white movies anymore?

      Also, broadcast TV really beings to lose its luster when I have 20,000 hrs of video sitting on its shelf at home. I have 500 channels today, and its 99% garbage. I'd be much better off buying the shows i like in a static format, but the price point isn't quite there yet.

      Theoretically, it should never be there. Broadcasting should always be cheaper than distributing static media. Most of the stuff that worth watching is still only worth watching once anyway. I mean, aside from the pack-rat mentality, why else would you need a permanant copy of something that you're probably never going to watch again? Luckily, said pack-rat/collectors mentality keeps the static media option viable, but also allows the price point to stay right where it is.

    6. Re:How appropriate by Kiryat+Malachi · · Score: 1

      DMCA.

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    7. Re:How appropriate by aussie_a · · Score: 1

      Broadcasting should always be cheaper than distributing static media. Most of the stuff that worth watching is still only worth watching once anyway. I mean, aside from the pack-rat mentality, why else would you need a permanant copy of something that you're probably never going to watch again?

      Well let's use Australian prices to see what is more viable. All of the numbers are of course only estimates.

      I've recently started watching Star Trek: Next Generation from a friend and I've nearly watched all 7 seasons. Now it would take my cable company about 3 years to show all the episodes (assuming they ran the show from episode 1 till the last one which they don't like to do). That would cost about $1,800. Now if I were to buy all of the box-sets it would cost $1,400.

      Two sorts of people will look at that and come to 2 conclusions. 1 conclusion is that I'd get a better deal from cable and will argue I get the benefit of all the other shows. The other conclusion is that I'd get a better deal with buying the box-sets as I don't watch too many other shows on cable (at the very most I'd only watch 2 or so other shows), I get the convenience of watching the shows on my own pace, I am guranteed on not having episodes skipped or shows stopped halfway through a season.

      I'm the latter. Cable companies DO suck. They change times consistently, they air episodes at random and stop broadcasting the show at random. I'd say there's a lot more then just "pack-rat mentality" causing people to buy their shows on DVD.

      ALSO if I truly did only want to watch the show once and never again, I could easily sell it on ebay and while I won't make all my money back, I'd make a fair chunk of it.

    8. Re:How appropriate by Ubergrendle · · Score: 1

      AND and the end of it you still have the DVD sets. True, they're used, but there's still value ascribed to them, even if you only got 20% of their purchase value back when you sold them on eBay.

      Broadcast provides you breadth of choice, but not depth -- not over the short term, anyways. And as a service model they keep making money from you month after month, and you retain nothing after the fact.

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    9. Re:How appropriate by Ubergrendle · · Score: 1

      Just like nobody buys old black and white movies anymore?

      If you look at volume of b&w TV shows vs volume of b&w DVD sales, you'll realise your comparison is not valid. The Jack Benny Program, one of the most popular TV shows of all time (and actually quite good) is barely available. Alot of b&w shows have been colourised to make them ~more~ consumer friendly. You and I both know its a stupid ploy, but shows like Friends have the forces of contemporary relevance; advertising; and latest broadcast resolution in their favour.

      Probably half of my DVD collection is b&w Criterion films from the 1930s-1960s, but I only bought them because a) they were hard to find, and b) they were classics that bore the weight of repeated viewings. "Classic" materials will always be in vogue, but I'm personally looking forward to seeing 95% of TV shows dead and buried from re-runs/DVD re-releases in favour of good programming again. Its sad when you pine for the days of "The A-Team" and "Magnum P.I." in comparison to the dreck UPN or reality TV has provided us. Me, I'll stick to BBC re-runs on PBS and the Independent Film Channel until mainstream culture gets its head out of its a** and produces good work again.

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
  8. 472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just thought I'd nitpick, but at 10-bit log depth, 4k academy aperture scans of 35mm motion picture film (which is about the standard now for digital postproduction), 1TB will only hold about 13 minutes of footage!
    At 2k, it's a much lengthier 55 minutes or so :)

    Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.

    1. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.

      They obviously mean porn.

    2. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by imsabbel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I dont think you can really take a 4k scan for face value. Not even good slrs with very good lenses and the best films available can really get 4k usable resolution on a 35mm film.
      And somehow i dont think a film camera doing 24fps can archive the same quality.
      Yes, you can scan it with that resolution, but you could scan it with 16k, too. There is just no (or little) more information in your 4k scan than in a 2k scan.
      I know you are nitpicking, but you could also claim that 3d is mission, what about ir und uv, ectect.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    3. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Throtex · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or one 524288 x 524288 @ 32 bpp frame, uncompressed.

    4. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by EvilNTUser · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video."

      That's why we here at slashdot usually use real units, like Libraries of Congress. The editor must have messed up.

      --
      My Sig: SEGV
    5. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by addaon · · Score: 1

      But both lens and sensor quality (and at a slower pace, film quality) are improving. 2k or 3k makes sense now; in ten years, 4k will be very reasonable.

      This 1TB number is truly unimpressive. It serves more as a reminder that (2D) optical has a limited future due to nasty things like wavelength, rather than as a technology to lust over.

      --

      I've had this sig for three days.
    6. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      The lord of the rings films were 2k transfers (except FOTR, which was part D.I. and part contact-printed the old-fashioned way).

      I've seen 2k side-by-side compared with 4k (scaled down to 2k) and it's amazing how much more information is present.
      (google for 4k vs 4k scan or look here for some images: http://www.cintel.co.uk/technology/4k.htm )

      Anyhow... just griping that it takes SOO much space to do on-line edits these days :P There is certainly an urgent need for huge amounts of storage and fast access to that storage in the motion picture industry.

      And another thing.. since they are targeting this things 5-10 years out, don't you think it's right on track with Moore's law? I mean.. what's so surprising then??

      /guy with 35mm movie camera and a world of complaints :)

    7. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It's already happening.. I was just talking to the head of digital production at Technicolor Toronto (ToyBox) last week, and I asked "who is going with 4k these days?". To which he replied, "oh, most people are now.. Pirates of the Caribbean for example."


      of course, I'm pretty sure it's all going to some digital tape format or other.. yet another argument in favour of tape!

    8. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Im not quite sure on your math of this ...

      4k aperture = 4096x3112 pixels x 10 bit recording depth per pixel x 24 fps = ~3gbps (375MB/sec) which translates into about 44 minutes of uncompressed video, 12.7megpixel video!

      Are the pixels defined as a 'photosite triad' or is a pixel defined as a single photosite? The reason I ask is because if a pixel in this case is defined as a 'RBG' triad, then it would be about 14 minutes of video, but if it is defined as per photosite, then it would be 44 minutes of video or so... either way, I dont see much consumer need for 12.7 megapixel video, although perhaps by the time this stuff is released (2010) things may be a bit different!

    9. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Overzeetop · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, but just think how good the 650MB DiVX rips will be!

      *ducks*

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    10. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 1

      4K isn't really the standard for digital post. It's the "standard" for digital mastering, if something as new and rare as digital mastering can be said to have any standard anythings.

      For digital post, it's 2K --2048x1556.

      --

      I write in my journal
    11. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by corsican · · Score: 1
      "I dont see much consumer need for 12.7 megapixel video"

      How's that 640K of RAM workin' out for ya?

      --
      --If something I said could be taken two ways, and one of those ways made you cry, then I meant the other way.
    12. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4096x3112 pixels x10 bits per colour. Approximately 4 bytes per pixel (when you account for the fact that cineon for example includes thumbnail images, etc.).

      The number I came up with was roughly 1.25 GigaBytes per second. Fairly on track with the 73GB/minute or so I was quoted.

    13. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by LaCosaNostradamus · · Score: 1

      Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.

      It's 472 hours of the kind of video that is required by the MPAA to convince the US Congress to slap a huge tax on each and every single one of these "pirate's library" discs ... a tax which will be promptly turned over to the MPAA. If it turns out to be 120x240 pixel, CGA-depth video, then that's just a technical detail that doesn't enter into the basic equation of that damned, damned piracy of America's essential base of wealth: Hollywood movies.

      --
      [You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
    14. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by Andy_R · · Score: 2, Informative

      I used to make 35mm slides with a computer controlled slide writer. We wrote slides to film at 4k resolution, and only used the low quality 2k setting for rush jobs - the difference was clearly visible on all but the very worst office slide projectors. When I got out of the business, 8k and even 16k writers were not unusual, and the improvement was noticeable, so scanning at 4k will indeed provide a lot of useful information from certain film types that 2k will not show.

      --
      A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    15. Re:472 hours of _film_ ? by multiplexo · · Score: 1
      How's that 640K of RAM workin' out for ya?

      It's awesome, of course it's installed in my coffeemaker, but hey, it's still pretty cool.

      --
      cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
  9. /.ed by mconeone · · Score: 0

    Anyone have the tet of the article? How are transfer speeds/times?

    1. Re:/.ed by VitaminB52 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Anyone have the tet of the article? How are transfer speeds/times?

      I don't have the text of the article, but I did RTFA. The FA doesn't specify:

      • Transfer speed(s)
      • Cost of a player
      • Cost of a writer
      • If this technology can be used for RW discs
      What it did 'specify' is the cost of an empty disc, they expect it to be about equal to a normal (writable ? rewritable ?) DVD; and the fact that players should be able to play normal CDs and DVDs too.
  10. krrraazzy by blooba · · Score: 2, Interesting

    it's just getting ridiculous. i think we all grossly underestimate both the tech we will soon have, and how soon we will have it. i sure do. my feeble imagination is boggled.

    1. Re:krrraazzy by Epistax · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, they'll have a shelf life of 3 years by technology and 2 years by design. And I base that on nothing whatsoever.
      Doesn't make me wrong though ;-).

  11. Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    When you're speaking of a circular optical media, it's called a Disc, not a Disk.

    Hence Compact Disc, Digital Versatile Disc.

    1. Re:Disc, not Disk by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      So magnetic disks are spelled with k, optical ones are spelled with c. Now, what about magneto-optical? Disck?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't be suck a dic

      By the way, the grandparent is right. Optical discs are spelled with a C. The rest are with a k.

      Might as well be proper.

    3. Re:Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I believe the proper term is "500 mebibit magneto-optical cartridge."

    4. Re:Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      What about floppy? Mine is spelled with a 'c' and a 'k'.

    5. Re:Disc, not Disk by iNetRunner · · Score: 2, Funny

      You can leave that 's' off.. Enough consonants there already. ;)

      --
      Store with salt
    6. Re:Disc, not Disk by brian+ferullo · · Score: 1

      dork :P

    7. Re:Disc, not Disk by psbrogna · · Score: 1

      According to people that make dictionaries (ie. Merriam-Webster & Oxford), they're the same.

    8. Re:Disc, not Disk by 216pi · · Score: 1

      and I thought, disk is a disc-reader for kde. or would that be Kdis?

    9. Re:Disc, not Disk by dmayle · · Score: 2, Informative

      Now, what about magneto-optical?

      Sorry to be pedantic, but it would be a disk (or a cartridge). Current optical media are labelled discs because of the physical format. (For example, 3 1/2 inch floppies disks contain a magnetic disc inside their sleeve.) Hard disks use disc-shaped platters on a spindle.

    10. Re:Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The proper SI prefix is mibobit.

      Now, if you're talking about French prefixes it would be mublàcomputrons, or perhaps mabôcomputrons. But not "mebi." Never.

    11. Re:Disc, not Disk by lupinstel · · Score: 1

      Why have I never noticed that until you pointed it out? I guess you learn something new everyday.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
  12. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just in time for HL2!

    In other news, Duke Nukem found crying in a garbage can.

  13. Backups by Dr.+ScattLove · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Now I only have to wait 6-7 years to back up all my pr0n on one disk. Great!

    On the flip side...I can watch them all in sequence...all 472 hours.

    DSL

  14. Porn and the Open Source Movement by SlashdotMirrorer · · Score: 0

    As we all know, the pornography industry will likely be the first to capitalize on such new technologies. I know it is difficult for the bearded terminal hacker set to associate with such businesses (or businesses in general), but wouldn't it help the Open source user base to help develop such technologies? I know that there has been some work in the Redhat labs on interactivity in multi-user adult situations, however I'm not sure of the extent to which other Linux users and developers are involved. Perhaps an open source project on new video codecs that generate larger video files that can take advantage of the new medium are in order.

    Of course, you must always pay the piper, so it may be in our best interests to help the porn industry with this new media format.

    1. Re:Porn and the Open Source Movement by aussie_a · · Score: 1

      I'm dissapointed. I thought this would be about open-source porn :(

  15. woah! uberporn! by spacerodent · · Score: 0, Redundant

    thats over a year of continous porn...365 days of uninterupted writhing lesbians.. (assuming divx format VHS standard)

    1. Re:woah! uberporn! by jmke · · Score: 1

      HOURS not DAYS but brain into motion before mouth.

    2. Re:woah! uberporn! by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 2, Funny

      PUT not BUT.. Put brain into motion before typing.

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
    3. Re:woah! uberporn! by jmke · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      who da man now? :p

    4. Re:woah! uberporn! by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      Just because the disc can hold more doesn't mean that those poor actresses won't still get tired. They need to eat and sleep just like the rest of the overworked, underpaid actors striving to make it.

      And boy, do they ever make it.

    5. Re:woah! uberporn! by spacerodent · · Score: 1

      read what I wrote. Divx format at VHS quality. Thats easily months. Not hours. Slightly short of a year though.

    6. Re:woah! uberporn! by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 1
      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
  16. before it gets totally slashdotted.... by LiquidMind · · Score: 2, Informative

    From TFA...

    Physicists at Imperial College London are developing a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan today, Dr Peter Török, Lecturer in Photonics in the Department of Physics, will describe a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.

    Physicists at Imperial College London are developing a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one.

    Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan today, Dr Peter Török, Lecturer in Photonics in the Department of Physics, will describe a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.

    All 350 scheduled episodes of The Simpsons, totalling 8,080 minutes of film, could be easily stored on the new disk, dubbed MODS - for Multiplexed Optical Data Storage - by the Imperial College team.

    The 1TB disk would be double sided and dual layer, but even a single sided, single layer, MODS disk could hold the Lord of the Rings trilogy 13 times over, or all 238 episodes of Friends.

    MODS disks will not be the first to challenge DVDs' domination of the audiovisual optical disk market. BluRay disks, which have five times the capacity of a DVD at 25GB per layer, are expected to be released towards the end of 2005 for the home market.

    The Imperial researchers, working closely with colleagues at the Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, estimate that MODS disks would cost approximately the same to manufacture as an ordinary DVD and that any system playing them would be backwards compatible with existing optical formats - meaning that CDs and DVDs could be played on a MODS system. Dr Török believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015 if his team are able to secure funding for further development.

    "According to our experimental results, we can optimistically estimate that we will be able to store about one Terabyte per disk in total using our new method," said Dr Török, leader of the research. "This translates to about 250GB per layer, 10 times the amount that a BluRay disk can hold."

    The Imperial researchers and colleagues at Neuchâtel and Thessaloniki filed a patent covering their ideas in July 2004.

    Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and noughts. When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.

    Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a 'step' sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. A different physical phenomenon is used to achieve the additional gain.

    "We came up with the idea for this disk some years ago," says Dr Török. "But did not have the means to prove whether it worked. To do that we developed a precise method for calculating the properties of reflected light, partly due to the contribution of Peter Munro, a PhD student working with me on this project. We are using a mixture of numerical and analytical techniques that allow us to treat the scattering of light from the disk surface rigorously rather than just having to a

    --
    This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
  17. measurement units by kirkb · · Score: 5, Funny

    Simpsons episodes? I thought that the accepted unit of measurement for storage devices was "libraries of congress"?

    --
    Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
    1. Re:measurement units by shut_up_man · · Score: 5, Funny

      I believe the a more practical unit of measurement is the "collected works of Jenna Jameson".

    2. Re:measurement units by mikael · · Score: 4, Funny

      You need this handy table of International Units of Measurements:

      Height of small objects: Pepsi/Coke cans

      Height of medium objects: Two storey family home

      Height of large buildings and astronomical objects: Statues of Liberties or Taj Mahal's

      Volume of medium-sized objects: Ford pickup truck/Indian bull elephant

      Volume of large objects: Superbowl stadium/Oil tanker

      Volume of extremely large objects: Planet Earth

      Slow speed objects: Garden snail

      Medium speed objects: Grand Prix racing car

      High speed objects: Artillery shell/Rifle bullet

      Most if not all of these objects can be found around or near the typical family dwelling home.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    3. Re:measurement units by darkmeridian · · Score: 1
      (http://hamfisted.net/)
      I believe the a more practical unit of measurement is the "collected works of Jenna Jameson".

      Well, two observations.

      1. Your website is really damned funny in this context.

      2. Does this metric you propose include her comps?
      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    4. Re:measurement units by debrain · · Score: 1

      I believe the a more practical unit of measurement is the "collected works of Jenna Jameson".

      Because it grows at about the same rate as hard drive space?

    5. Re:measurement units by narsiman · · Score: 1

      That was when people read books.

    6. Re:measurement units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      High speed objects: Artillery shell/Rifle bullet

      Most if not all of these objects can be found around or near the typical family dwelling home.

      Wow, artillery shells are reguarly found around or near the typical family dwelling home?

      Must be redneck country!

  18. Well, by hartba · · Score: 5, Funny

    Would that be every episode of the Simpons from inception to today or until the release date in 2015, and exactly how many epsiodes with that consist of? Would I be able to store deleted scenes and commentaries? What if Matt Groening decides to convert some of the characters from earlier episodes to CGI, with the help of Stephen Speilberg and George Lucas? Could those fit as well? I need to know this or I'm not buying one.

    --
    60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
    1. Re:Well, by Luminari · · Score: 3, Funny
      • What if Matt Groening decides to convert some of the characters from earlier episodes to CGI, with the help of Stephen Speilberg and George Lucas?

      If George Lucas is involved then they will change it so Mr. Burns will have fired the first bullet when Maggie shoots him in the Who shot Mr. Burns episode.
    2. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      What if Matt Groening decides to convert some of the characters from earlier episodes to CGI, with the help of Stephen Speilberg and George Lucas? Could those fit as well?


      You want the version where Bart shoots first??

    3. Re:Well, by hartba · · Score: 3, Funny

      If Stephen Speilberg is involved, Maggie's gun would be replaced with a walkie-talkie and Mr. Burns would fly away on a bicyle.

      --
      60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
  19. obligatory . . . by queequeg1 · · Score: 1

    cool. Enough time to allow me to rip all my CDs so I can listen to them in the fusion powered flying cars that will also come on the market ten years from now.

  20. Who cares by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I fail to get excited over technology "announcements" that are years away and completely vaporware now.

    Blueray is the guaranteed next step up from DVD, and the consumers have yet to hold anything in their hands.

    Seems like a waste of article space on slashdot.

    --

    Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    1. Re:Who cares by aussie_a · · Score: 1

      Seems like a waste of article space on slashdot.

      You're new here aren't you?

  21. coral cache link by dwight0 · · Score: 1

    http://www.physorg.com.nyud.net:8090/news1333.html

  22. Who needs it? by jmcmunn · · Score: 2, Insightful


    By then, I'm planning on the entire global computer network to be seemlessly linked and networked so that I no longer need to save it locally, or back it up to disk. Distributed storage will have a whole new meaning.

    That way, only one person has to have the entire Simpsons...or only one person has to have the pr0n if you prefer.

    I'm only kidding of course...but who's to say that 1TB is even going to be worth having in another 6 years? I expect to carry that in my pocket on a pen drive by then.

    1. Re:Who needs it? by incog8723 · · Score: 1

      I expect to carry that in my pocket on a pen drive by then.

      I'm concurring. 1 Terabyte is already available in a 5 1/4 form factor hard drive. By then, it will be like 20TB in the same form factor. By then you'll be able to get a three drive RAID with 500GB and it will be probably less than 100 dollars. Don't forget that the R&D going into this futile project is going to raise the initial pricing of it. People need to forget optical storage, at least on a piece of plastic... It's too fucking fragile; even more than a hard drive.

      Goodbye Optical Button.

  23. New Format??? Oh No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Damn, I just bought the Star Wars DVD collection and now Lucas is will get me to buy another format of Star Wars. When will it end!!

    1. Re:New Format??? Oh No by SpiffyMarc · · Score: 1

      Don't worry... by that time, you'll have to wait until Episodes 7, 8 and 9 are finished, as he'll only want to release it as a complete set (episodes 1-9.)

  24. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  25. Simpsons anthologies? by bgeer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm kind of confused by these nonstandard units they're using here. How many Libraries of Congress can it hold, or better yet what's the unit ratio for Simpsons anthologies per human genome? TIA.

  26. Ob Microsoft Putdown by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Funny

    So Longorn SP2 will fit on 2 disks!

    1. Re:Ob Microsoft Putdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      And one of those will be for the EULA!

    2. Re:Ob Microsoft Putdown by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      I was thinking more along the lines of actually fitting Debian Sarge on one disc.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  27. That's sooo last month... by craftyimp · · Score: 3, Informative

    A similar story was posted last month on slashdot.
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/25/163922 4&tid=198&tid=1

    Optware -- the company claiming to have done this a month ago -- has a press release available at:
    http://www.optware.co.jp/english/what_040823.htm

  28. So now can I ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    download the Internet??!!

  29. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  30. Coral Cache by silverfuck · · Score: 2, Informative

    a new method.

    holographic optical storage

    Caught it about 90secs before it started intermittently saying "PhysOrg is temporarily unavailable."

    --
    You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
  31. Professor predicts product probability? by JUSTONEMORELATTE · · Score: 4, Funny

    There was a Dilbert strip long ago in which he returned to college. The professor introduced his class by presenting a complex diagram -- "This diagram explains why I'm an expert in economics, yet dress like a flood victim."

    Call me when it's out of the Uni and into a corporation's lab, then we can talk.

  32. The MPAA cannot allow this. by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 5, Funny
    If there is that much storange on a disk, it will only be used by movie pirates. And if it gets into the hands of consumers, it will destroy the entire movie industry.


    They must get Congress to out law this. At the same time, maybe they should have copyrights extended to 200 years instead of the puny 75 years. 75 years is not enough time for the copyright holders to recoup their investments and 200 years will encourage the creative people to produce more creative works.

    1. Re:The MPAA cannot allow this. by russint · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why is parent modded flamebait? Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

      --
      ^^
    2. Re:The MPAA cannot allow this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love how the patent on life-saving medications lasts only 20 years while the all important patent on Mickey Mouse seems to have no end.

    3. Re:The MPAA cannot allow this. by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      Why is parent modded flamebait?

      You must be new here. Everything is offtopic and/or flamebait unless proven otherwise. None of the mods here have a sense of humor at all and can't take an obvious joke. But they can mod +5 the guy who took it seriously.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  33. Simpsons did it! by mrshowtime · · Score: 2, Funny

    Seriously, by the time this mego-optical disk is ready, the Simpsons might actually all finally be released on DVD. They just released season 4 on DVD, and what, we're on season 15 now? Shit, if they did release all the episodes on one MEGA disc, it would cost damn near $1000, and it would be worth every penny. :)

    --
    "Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
    1. Re:Simpsons did it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a torrent out there which contains all simpsons episodes aired so far. Quality is fine compared to TV. Size? 35 GB.

      When something worth 1000$ is available for free, is that a lot of saved money, or a lot of destroyed value?

    2. Re:Simpsons did it! by Shulai · · Score: 1

      Seriously, I wonder how much such a disc would cost. I mean, how much money a TV network would ask for a complete Simpsons (or Seinfeld, of Friends, or...) record. They still will do a lot of money yet with reruns, their only incentive to offer reasonable prices are the MPEG homemade copies lying around...

  34. Ooh! by Paster+Of+Muppets · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Great! So this means I can store all the stuff I need to know for my degree on a disc that one of my lecturers in the department has developed? So if I set up a video camera at the back of the lecture theatre, set it to record...

    Say fifteen hours of lectures a week, for 25 weeks of lectures, that makes 375 hours of lectures this year... Should just do it.

    Ah, extensive lie-ins await.

    Yes, I study Physics at Imperial. Yes, Dr Torok is one of my lecturers. Yes, I should be posting this anonymously.

    --
    Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
    1. Re:Ooh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tip: Just greet him with a friendly "Geci tanár!"

  35. In 5 to 10 years? by WormholeFiend · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just about the same time when we should be getting our first flying cars!!!

    I'll be installing a Terabyte Disk player in the dashboard for sure!

  36. It's the transfer rate stupid by joelethan · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So, expecting to fill such a disk on a home system, it would be a reasonable user requirement to expect to take a maximum of 30 minutes to fill the single-side, single-layer disk. That is 250GB in 30 minutes, or 138MB per second.

    That should keep your average desktop busy in 2010! And picture doing this over a LAN or WAN.

    /JE

    1. Re:It's the transfer rate stupid by Agilis · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      That should keep your average desktop busy in 2010! And picture doing this over a LAN or WAN.
      If bandwidth is an issue, we can always go back to stationwagons.
    2. Re:It's the transfer rate stupid by mabinogi · · Score: 1

      why would that be a reasonable user requirement?
      It may be a common user desire, but that doesn't mean it's either reasonable, or a requirement.

      Hell, I want my optical media to be writeable in 5 minutes, but I've got to put up with 15 - 20 for DVD at the moment.

      A user will put up with what they get - if they want a 1TB disc, and the only one that exists takes 2 hours to fill, then they'll deal with it.

      Transfer rate has almost never been an important issue in optical media - it's pure storage size that matters most.

      also, you appear to have made the rather bizarre assumption that nothing else is going to change in six years...138MB per second may well be quite obtainable.

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
  37. Cool! by Control+Group · · Score: 1
    That's way more information than you can store on FMD-ROMs!

    It's too bad Duke Nukem Forever is coming out before either, or it could fit on just one of these discs.

    --

    Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
  38. Two leading innovation accelerators. by ceeam · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Wars and software piracy.

    :)

    1. Re:Two leading innovation accelerators. by Taladar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't forget Porn :)

    2. Re:Two leading innovation accelerators. by MrNemesis · · Score: 1

      Maybe this was intended as a joke, but I'm of the opinion that the "adult" industry has done more for the widespread adoption of the internet and online distribution in general than any other competing industry. Mod parent up!

      --
      Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
  39. Lovely... by mreed911 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    but still should be enough to fit every episode of The Simpsons on one disk. Dr Török, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015."

    Great. I'll need to invest at a pretty high interest rate to afford EVERY episode on one disk. Single-season sets are running $30-$50. Ten seasons and you're looking at a CAR PAYMENT...

    1. Re:Lovely... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ha ha ha. Good one.

    2. Re:Lovely... by jmcmunn · · Score: 1


      Amazon has had each one for $33 I think...so it's not quite a car payment for some of us.

      But don't worry, that is one car payment spread out over at least 6 years! Your car will be paid off by then!

  40. What's REALLY next for optical? by swb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've learned to completely discount all the "..researchers announce xxx {giga,tera}bytes on a DVD..." stories I've read here, simply because they've never become products or the timeline is so drawn out (2015???) that it's meaningless.

    The only products that appear likely to actually hit the market for real are Blu-Ray and its competitor, DVD-HD (which seems kind of dead in the water as a data storage standard due to its limited size and growth). Blu Ray appears to have some legs from what I've read, due to its layer growth capability.

    What's after that? Are there any storage standards backed by large consortiums coming after Blu Ray? Or is multi-layer blu ray supposed to be "good enough" until some of this lab stuff makes it to market in 2015?

  41. Physical limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much you might store on the surface of something the size of a CD. Based on a wavelength of 500 nM and given a dot one wavelength in each direction for each bit, I got a number a lot closer to tens of gigs than to a terabyte. I think we are beginning to see the limits of cd/dvd technology.

    1. Re:Physical limits by YellowElf · · Score: 2, Informative
      RTFA RTFA RTFA (before the Slashdot Effect rears its head, of course). The article describes where the additional storage bitspace comes from:

      ... When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.

      Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a 'step' sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back.

      So 332 angles means another ~16.3 bits of data per pit. "Tens of gigs" * 16.3 could give close to a TB, depending on your number of tens.

      --
      Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
    2. Re:Physical limits by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 1

      I don't think 332 angles gives you ~16 bits/pit. At best you get ~8 bits/pit. And a lousy error rate. Certainly not usable for storage of your typical MPEG data, where a one-bit error can cause major visual damage. To get data reliability you'd have to use a very aggressive error-correcting code which would undo a lot of the gains in density. There aint no free lunch. You can get more density, but you have to give up some signal/noise ratio. Maybe the Simpson's reference is apropos-- cartoons can be rendered with fewer bits.

    3. Re:Physical limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A choice among 332 angles is only 8.4 bits of information.

    4. Re:Physical limits by YellowElf · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected. ~8 bits is the correct dimension.

      --
      Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
    5. Re:Physical limits by JamesP · · Score: 1

      but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way

      I just hope the Rebel Aliance catches up soon... Go Luke!!

      --
      how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
  42. I'd have to agree. by WebCowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What a shameful waste of technology. All those flat, vast expanses of yellow skintone and blue hair that are Homer's abdomen and Marge's hair? Anybody who watches the Simpsons ought to recognise how compressible such simple artwork is. Add that to the fact that most TV animation is "shot on twos" so it is largely 12 or 15 frames per second anyways.

    Come to think of it, properly compressed one such disk could probably store the complete works of the Simpsons, Futurama AND South Park and have room to spare--without noticeable degredation in picture and sound quality.

    Lets use our imaginations--with high-density storage like this, consumer-grade equiment of the future could store amazing virtual worlds right down to the last twig and blade of grass...

    1. Re:I'd have to agree. by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      I actually just got to watch the DVD of Happy Tree Friends, which is originally a flash web cartoon series. There's over 2 hours of disgusting violence, but they managed to fit it down to 4.0 GB because the animation was around 5-10 fps. Thus, they were able to retain a lot of quality with a low bitrate.

      (I know MPEG streams can only go down to about 24 fps, it's all about frame type orders and using a lot of the type that repeat frames)

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    2. Re:I'd have to agree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They'd need to be DVD quality to not notice any compression artifacts. I have some episodes that look decent using MP4 @ 25fps but you can definately tell that it's compressed. Those are around 75MB each.

      I have others that have the framerate chopped down to 15fps and you can absolutely tell that frames got cut. The Simpsons isn't nearly as simple as you claim. The artists are actually very good and the framerate is around 25fps.

    3. Re:I'd have to agree. by Rheagar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But you must remember, The Simpsons will never be cancelled. Therefore, storing every episode is truly a marvelous feat.

    4. Re:I'd have to agree. by whittrash · · Score: 1

      I wonder what kind of gaming they could do with this kind of thing. You could store and entire world on a disk.

    5. Re:I'd have to agree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      properly compressed, one such disk could probably store the complete works of the Simpsons, Futurama AND South Park and have room to spare--without noticeable degredation in picture and sound quality.

      What makes you think that current media formats do not already employ as many compression techniques as they can? Tell you what: If you can produce the same kind of quality out of a simpsons episode that a divx enocded mpg already does and get a significantly smaller file size, you will probably have quite a few job offers.

    6. Re:I'd have to agree. by Brewdles · · Score: 1

      Similar things were said about cd and dvd's. I'm betting that Unreal Tournament 2016 comes out on 6 of these discs...

  43. Ideal for Star Wars 50th edition by mirko · · Score: 2, Funny

    During the last discussion about Star Wars DVD set sombody mentioned that the original featured a 15000 line resolution, I guess, the final edition which will consist the "shoot before Greedo FPS" will barely occupy one of these discs...

    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  44. Don't lose it! by perdu · · Score: 2, Funny
    Just don't leave one in a cab with all of your pictures on it, as we read in Why You Should Never Lose Your Digital Media

    --
    You only use 2% of your DNA
    1. Re:Don't lose it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      shut up you dipshit, u aint funny. go play with traffic.

  45. Is anybody going to care about optical? by DanielMarkham · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Once USB drives reach 20-30GB for ten bucks or so, who's going to need a bigger optical format?

    Isn't the unit of storage the movie? Or the CD collection? Once I can put all of that on a hardware device for the cost of a cheeseburger, what the heck do I want to be carrying around disks for?

  46. Longevity by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While I'm glad to see advances being made in storage media, I'd prefer to see these guys working to make a '100-year DVD+-R/RW'.

    After all, who wants to spend one week a year doing quality assurance on media. And even if you do QA, what if you find something is bad. While you can re-download your warez and pr0n, the photos and videos of your family vacation will be lost forever.

    --
    I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
    1. Re:Longevity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While you can re-download your warez and pr0n, the photos and videos of your family vacation will be lost forever.

      Now that all depends on exactly who your family members are and what they did on vacation, doesn't it?

    2. Re:Longevity by G-funk · · Score: 1

      Simple. Keep everything you can't download again from the net, on your harddrive, and back that up from time to time. It's the only decent way to go about it these days, with throw-away media produced at such low quality to reduce the costs.

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    3. Re:Longevity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Burn a 2nd copy... pray that both copies don't go bad at the same place at the same time. Which is a bit of a stretch since most manuf glitches occur during dye spreading, making data stored on the outside edges especially vulnerable.

      2) Add parity/recovery blocks to your data using either WinRAR or QuickPar. That way, when the disc starts to go bad, there is a recovery window during which you can repair the damage. If the disc loses 1% of its information per year, and you have 5% recovery data, you need to check the discs more often then every 5 years (on average).

      Best solution is to backup your photos and other data to removable IDE drives (at least 3 drive units), periodically rotated with the newest pair stored off-site in a safe location. Use optical media along with parity data as a last-ditch recovery method (IOW, use it soley for low-access archiving).

  47. +1 Informative by ggvaidya · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia confirms this, but you'd have to be a fanatic to actually make the distinction. Still, definately not flamebait.

    1. Re:+1 Informative by The+Only+Druid · · Score: 1

      Not really a fanatic...its the distinction between the word disc (which derives from discus) and disk (which derives from diskette). The fact that their modern, shortened forms are homophones shouldn't mean that people who recognize that they're not homonyms are fanatic...

      --
      "Stumble before you crawl"
    2. Re:+1 Informative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well Wiki is a work in progress. I heard that an empty disc was a disc and a disk with information on it was a disk.

    3. Re:+1 Informative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, they both derive from discus. And "diskette" means "little disk" so you've got that derivation backwards.

  48. Great by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I'll have to buy the White album again.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  49. "PhysOrg is temporarily unavailable." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How ofter does your S.O. say that? And do you get them new batteries when they do?

  50. 472 hours of video on a terabyte by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If we assume the PAL resolution (768x576) using the NV12 pixel format (at an average of 12 bits per pixel), and PAL framerate (25Hz (50Hz when deinterlaced)), we get 16 588 800 bytes per second. At this rate, 1 TB (or 2^40 bytes) would give you 18 hours of video.

    Implying a compression ratio of 1:25 when talking about storage doesn't help the quality of the information.

    1. Re:472 hours of video on a terabyte by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      But I would imagine that you'd do at least lossless compression. Assuming you can get a compression factor of 2.5, that gives you 45 hours of full-quality video.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:472 hours of video on a terabyte by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      It's also worth noting that the increase in lines and decrease in framerate in PAL as compared to NTSC conteract each other exactly so that they use the same data rate. Because the pixel clock is the same, that extra 1/6th means there's time to draw 48 extra lines (at VCD quality, 352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL).

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  51. Gmail? by incuso · · Score: 1, Funny

    It is time for Google to upgrade to 1 TByte :) M. -- http://incuso.altervista.org

  52. 472 hours of film by ergean · · Score: 1

    1 Terabyte is that 1.000 gigabytes?
    472 hours of film,what the hell, now we have a new system of measurement for storage?

    This is /. so they the best way to say how large is the storage capacity they should say 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. (I don't think I'm the only one that counts the powers of 2 when I want to sleep or when I'm just bored.)

  53. Hmm , call me a cynic but... by Viol8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... using multiple step angles of a slope to set a value sounds to me suspiciously like they're heading in the direction of analogue recording which rather defeats the whole point of using pits as binary ones and zeros. Sure , using an analogue system you could head towards infinite data density but with increase in apparent storage so is there an increase in error rate. Fine for a music CD where the odd corrupt bit of data doesn't matter , perhaps more of a problem for DVDs but not a killer , but DEFINATELY a problem for data CDs/DVDs. I can't see this method catching on, its just too open to read errors , and as for writing data using a RW system (as opposed to pressing) , oh man....

  54. Typical slashdot humor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think whenever an article adresses storage that is X years away, you can expect the following breakdown of jokes:

    65% pr0n jokes
    10% microsoft jokes
    10% star wars jokes
    8% duke nukem forever jokes
    5% white album jokes
    2% slashdot humor jokes

    1. Re:Typical slashdot humor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot the simpsons jokes! Haaaa Haaaa !!!

  55. Everyones a pirate! by TippyTwoShoes · · Score: 0
    "All 350 scheduled episodes of The Simpsons, totaling 8,080 minutes of film, could be easily stored on the new disk..."

    Their REAL motivation to do the project surfaces! Soon to be sold on Ebay "8,080 minutes of the Simpsons, digitally mastered onto one convenient CD!"**

    **Must also purchase special player device ($49,999 retail)

  56. Nothing New Here... by Ironsides · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I remember several yars ago reading about a CD Burner that would be able to burn 5.6GBytes onto a regular CD. It used a gray-scale recording like they are talking about only it worked with existing CD-Rs you could buy in the store. Only difference here is they are using the existing DVD technology and a higher order modulation.

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
    1. Re:Nothing New Here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It didn't pan out as the media degraded much more quickly (technically it degraded the same it's just that because the tolerance for degradation was so much more narrow due to their encoding scheme you would lose data much more quickly).

  57. Dr. Torok? by JPamplin · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can think of two scenarios:

    1. Dr. Torok is vulcan and this is the first seeding of Vulcan technology (apart from the T'Pol grandmother selling velcro to Americans in the 1950's).

    2. Isn't Torok that caveman stuck in the futuristic jumping / FPS game? He's certainly progressed.

    JP

    1. Re:Dr. Torok? by Flatline_hun · · Score: 1

      "Török" is a hungarian name, you insensitive clod!

      --
      Yeah, free Ipod! He is innocent!
  58. Extreme HDTV by Baki · · Score: 1

    It will rather be used for extreme-HDTV: put 2 hours of video on it, with 10000x10000 pixels at 200 frames per second. That'll keep the p2p pirates busy for a while.

    1. Re:Extreme HDTV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i guess they could always scale it down to 1080i and drop the redundant 200 frames to 60 frames a second.. its not like the dvd rips you get are at the original pixels.. they are usually scaled down.. and some even have the frame-rate dropped.

    2. Re:Extreme HDTV by zackeller · · Score: 1

      Until they compress it to one CD.

  59. I'll believe it when: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    News like this comes out every other month, but the reality is that we're at least a decade of from storage like that on an optical disk.

    Anyway, free flat screens, help a brother out. LOL


    Right Here



    1. Re:I'll believe it when: by mabinogi · · Score: 1

      2015
      -2004
      ------
      11

      hmmm...at least a decade?

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
  60. Don't scratch it! by Riverhead · · Score: 1

    One of my concerns as data density increases, especially on portable media like an optical disc, is that accidental damage can be catastrophic. A scratch on a 1TB disc could wipe out 50 episodes of the Simpon's! :(.

  61. Re:/.ed - text is here by VitaminB52 · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Copy and paste from the website:

    Physicists at Imperial College London are developing a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one.

    Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan today, Dr Peter Török, Lecturer in Photonics in the Department of Physics, will describe a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.

    All 350 scheduled episodes of The Simpsons, totalling 8,080 minutes of film, could be easily stored on the new disk, dubbed MODS - for Multiplexed Optical Data Storage - by the Imperial College team.

    The 1TB disk would be double sided and dual layer, but even a single sided, single layer, MODS disk could hold the Lord of the Rings trilogy 13 times over, or all 238 episodes of Friends.

    MODS disks will not be the first to challenge DVDs' domination of the audiovisual optical disk market. BluRay disks, which have five times the capacity of a DVD at 25GB per layer, are expected to be released towards the end of 2005 for the home market.

    The Imperial researchers, working closely with colleagues at the Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, estimate that MODS disks would cost approximately the same to manufacture as an ordinary DVD and that any system playing them would be backwards compatible with existing optical formats - meaning that CDs and DVDs could be played on a MODS system. Dr Török believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015 if his team are able to secure funding for further development.

    "According to our experimental results, we can optimistically estimate that we will be able to store about one Terabyte per disk in total using our new method," said Dr Török, leader of the research. "This translates to about 250GB per layer, 10 times the amount that a BluRay disk can hold."

    The Imperial researchers and colleagues at Neuchâtel and Thessaloniki filed a patent covering their ideas in July 2004.

    Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and noughts. When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.

    Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a 'step' sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. A different physical phenomenon is used to achieve the additional gain.

    "We came up with the idea for this disk some years ago," says Dr Török. "But did not have the means to prove whether it worked. To do that we developed a precise method for calculating the properties of reflected light, partly due to the contribution of Peter Munro, a PhD student working with me on this project. We are using a mixture of numerical and analytical techniques that allow us to treat the scattering of light from the disk surface rigorously rather than just having to approximate it."

    Increasingly manufacturers are looking at miniaturising the size of optical disks, says Dr Török.

    "Multiplexing and high density ODS comes in handy when manufacturers talk about miniaturisation of the disks," he says. "In 2002 Philips announced the development of a 3cm diameter optical disk to store up to 1GB of data. The future for the mobile device market is likely to require small diameter disks storing much information. This is where a MODS disk could really fill a niche."

    Imperial College Innovations Ltd, the College's wholly owned technology transfer company, managed and helped to prepare the patent application.

  62. Sneaker net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An I thought the ipod gave my SneakerNet power. This will be great!

  63. Site is dead by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Anyone know where the site moved to (if anywhere) - the link in the original story is dead.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Site is dead by What'sInAName · · Score: 1


      The site is dead. The guy got some complaints and ended up taking it down. Too bad, too. It was quite funny, if a bit creepy.

  64. MOD PARENT DOWN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YOU FUCKING KARMA WHORE, USE AC NEXT TIME.
    you are now on my "mod down next ten posts" list.

  65. Every Episode?? by brjndr · · Score: 1
    "...still should be enough to fit every episode of The Simpsons on one disk."

    Depends on the resolution. I prefer to watch my Simpsons episodes in 191000076 x 108000054.

    1. Re:Every Episode?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have every episode of the simpsons. encoded in 320x320 (i think) - divx.. its 35 gigs and it fits on my 2.5" laptop drive !

    2. Re:Every Episode?? by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      Depends on the resolution. I prefer to watch my Simpsons episodes in 191000076 x 108000054.

      That's a lot of interlacing! You dizzy from the wobbly lines?

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  66. 10 hours tv per day ones whole life by peter303 · · Score: 1

    If one watches ten hours of TV a day for their entire life, that is about 250,000 hours. If you wanted new material every hour, and assuming PAL, then you'd need about 250 TB.

    Does anyone know the total amount of network and cable TV archives?

  67. Yay More Bloat... by megarich · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Of course by then the "execs" will just add so much bloat that you still won't get anymore then one movie on such disk. And not to mention who knows how much disk space videos in the future takes with all the advancements and what not...

  68. uhhhh... by wishiwascool · · Score: 1

    "believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015"

    Won't we have 1TB on our keychains by then??

    C'mon man... invent something now.

  69. No no no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    It's dsck.

    You know, like fsck.

  70. Oh great... by Angst+Badger · · Score: 1

    You know that wonderful zero-G nausea you get when you're about to make a backup of some irreplaceable data, and the drive tray slides shut before you have the disc seated correctly, and then the whole thing makes a horrible grinding noise?

    That's nothing compared to the feeling you'll get with 1TB discs.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
  71. mass storage by Paralizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can see the value of such a storage device in the future, but for now, who needs this? I'm not trying to flame the technology, it's great that significant research is being conducted in this area, but what kinds of media are you putting on these disks? Software companies still ship their products on CD's (even if they span 5-6 discs) simply because it is cheaper than the higher capacity discs (ie DVD). The largest application I've ever seen was a X-File game that spanned 8 CD's, which would be somewhere in the range of 5.46875GB, FAR less than a TB (1024GB).

    With that being said, it's exciting to see new ideas in technology emerging at such a rapid rate. :)

  72. Google conversion for your convenience by dkresge · · Score: 1
  73. No way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A disk which allows Lucas to put every single one of his edited versions of Star Wars on the same disk? Impossible!

  74. YABreakthrough by sycodon · · Score: 1

    Blah Blah Blah

    If I had a nickle everytime I read about some storage breakthrough, I'd have at least a few dollars.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  75. Breakthrough Nanotechnology Will Bring 100 Terabyt by fedrive · · Score: 1

    Breakthrough Nanotechnology Will Bring 100 Terabyte 3.5-inch Digital Data Storage Disks

    http://www.physorg.com/news785.html

  76. R og RW? by hitmark · · Score: 1

    that is what im wondering about. will it be fully RW? ie, no more limited numbers of rewrite like the cd-rw's have (about 1000 rewrites). hmm, it would allso be interesting to have the ability to delete files without haveing to erase the whole media...

    --
    comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
  77. by 2015... by ALpaca2500 · · Score: 1

    by 2015, all of the episodes of the simpsons might actually be out on DVD...

  78. Re:/.ed - text is here by Phisbut · · Score: 1
    so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one

    Now this is one thing I NEVER want to see happen... it's already bad enough that it takes up to 9 months to release season 5 while they're still shooting season like 16 (mostly because they don't have time to do all those DVD commentaries), if they had to wait till they could do the commentaries on all 20 (or however many seasons there will ever be), then by the time they're done, we'll be at a time when we'll say "Phew... you mean that disc can only hold one tiny terabyte?!?"

    Give me my Simpsons on DVD and stop looking for new technology!

    --
    After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
    - The Tao of Programming
  79. Flm storage by dazedNconfuzed · · Score: 1
    472 hours of film


    Maybe 472 hours of DVD-quality movies.


    Full movie film quality with no loss requires 1TB per hour.

    --
    Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
  80. By 2010 by narsiman · · Score: 1

    By 2010 we would have more simpson episodes which means, much larger disks of 2TB or more which would delay the project to 2020, by then we would have 10 additional years . . .Oh I just now came out of my requirements discussion.

  81. Single standard... by pdjohe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A single standard should be agreed on now for these new disks and not give companies the chance to make lots of different standards like the HD-DVD and blu-ray, DVD+R/-R, etc.etc. formats.

    Establish a single format and make everybody happy!

  82. stuff by zogger · · Score: 1

    one terrabyte, huh? Hmm, whopper home library on one disk. I'd like that, thousands of books on one disk, cool beans. Maybe use it to record your own movies or stills all on one disk in the camera (if it was fast enough to do it real time). How about a terrabyte of "live" linux versions, REALLY get a "try em all" disk?

    I wonder what the entire source forge or freshmeat library of apps would take?

    Hey, how big is the ole intarweb right now? How many 1 TB disks would it take to hold what's on the net at any given time lately? That's an interesting stat to know, I guess google might have a clue or lexis nexus.

    1. Re:stuff by shish · · Score: 1

      Last time I checked (a few months back, I can't find the page any mrore) sourceforge was 17TB...

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    2. Re:stuff by zogger · · Score: 1

      That's a LOT of programs! I wonder if there's any nerd out there has them all installed on a massive multi boot system? Would make an interesting and stupid nerd cred project in the "just because you can" category.

  83. Beg to differ. by purduephotog · · Score: 1

    When I worked for Kodak I saw the towers they used for 'screening' new technology. A 4k scan is nothing- the HR500 uses a 4K scan in the vertical direction of a 35mm frame... and we were only limited by the size of the available sensor at the time it was integrated (about 7 years ago)

    So... 12 bit REAL ADC on a 4K vertical Linear scan (3 channel + IR dust removal)...

    As for information differences in a 2k or 4k scan, I guess that really comes down to your perception of quality. I know mine is alot higher than yours ;)

    (yes I have a 50" wide print by 12 foot long)

    1. Re:Beg to differ. by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      Well, i doubt it, because im used to watch samples with an electron scanning microscope, which has a resolution of about 3nm.
      Zoom you 4k vertikcal resolution scan into a 100% crop and try to find film grain. If its visible, than you are fooling yourself, because your painfully scanned "resolution" is infact only recreating the quantisation artefacts of the photoactiv chemicals.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  84. Thanks to the DMCA by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    Simpsons episodes? I though that the accepted unit of measurement for storage devices was "libraries of congress"?

    Thanks to the DMCA you can't put the Library of Congress on a digital medium any more.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  85. WTF is this shit? by abolith · · Score: 1

    I only submitted this story A YEAR AGO.....

    --
    if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
    1. Re:WTF is this shit? by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1
      Don't worry. It'll still be "coming out soon" next year too.

      That's how worthless these types of announcements are.

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

  86. Constellation 3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What did ever happen to Constellation 3D?

    A couple years ago they announced writable discs of about the same capacity that were using multiple clear layers of phosphorescing pits.

  87. Just wake me up... by NerveGas · · Score: 1


    All of these super-high capacity optical/holographical stuff is always "just a few years away".

    Wake me up when one of them actually hits the market. Give me an extra shove if it's at a somewhat reasonable price.

    steve

    --
    Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
    1. Re:Just wake me up... by 3terrabyte · · Score: 1
      Yea, like next year when blu ray hits the shelves.

      Oh wait, go back to sleep. That's read-only. It'll be another year til we can burn at that price, and another year after that before it's less than $5 a disk

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

  88. No mp3 jokes? by Darth23 · · Score: 1

    There's at least one.

    --

    -------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.

  89. Let's run some numbers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's see...

    The simpsons 4th season is 4 (1 layer) dvds, according to amazon.

    Call each DVD 4.7 gig (according to tom's hardware), and we get one season of Simpsons = 18.8 gig.

    If we go Geeky we call 1 terabyte 1024 gig. 1024 / 18.8 = 54.5 (approx)

    So a one terabyte disk can hold fifty four and a half seasons. Amazon lists the simpsons first season as 1989.

    Therefore (if we neglect the possibility of HDTV simpsons) the media people have until 2043 to produce a Terebyte disk AND place every simpsons episode on it.

    This, of course, excludes the possibility that Fox will end the Simpsons. Seems like a relatively safe bet.

    The implications of HDTV Simpsons are left as an exercise for the reader.

  90. Conflict by ICECommander · · Score: 1

    And then there will be a lawsuit as to why the 1 Terabyte disc holds only 1000 GB instead of 1024 GB.

    --
    All your Sybase are belong to us.
  91. DVD-DL by lupinstel · · Score: 1

    Listen... I just want some dual layer disks that don't cost as much as a new movie. I don't need a terabyte right now, just some $.25 blanks.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
  92. Infinite amount of video in 1 bit of storage space by voxel · · Score: 1

    I can fit an infinite amount of video in one bit of storage space.... Here is the bit stream that represents every video ever made: 1

    See... now the resolution is pretty low and there is no audio stream (haven't figured out how to compress audio yet, might need another bit), but the video is all there! enjoy.

    Note: I own a copyright and patent on this technology. I call it 'one-bit-video' compression. Use it and I'll sue you for all you're worth.

    --
    Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
  93. Don't know whre you live... by ForresterInc · · Score: 0

    "can be found around or near the typical family dwelling home." "Statues of Liberties or Taj Mahal's" "Superbowl stadium/Oil tanker" Don't know where you live, but I don't live next door to a stadium (or the Statue of Liberty or Taj Mahal), and there's no oil tanker in my back yard either ;-)

    1. Re:Don't know whre you live... by mikael · · Score: 1

      This is the assumption I've encountered when watching the science channels; "This luxury yacht is the length of twenty blue whales put nose-to-tail and contains the volume of two superbowl stadiums. The captain's deck is at a height equivalent to two-thirds of the Statue of Liberty".

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  94. Funny... by WebCowboy · · Score: 1

    ..at least I hope you meant to mock the ridiculousness of taking a relatively tiny flash cartoon, recording it to video and re-compressing it in MPEG2 or some such thing.

    I'm astonished at the cluelessness that some other posters exhibited in their comments about artifacting, framerates, etc etc relating to MPEG encoding. I'm talking about PROPER compression people! Using DivX on a cartoon isn't exactly the best way to go--that's like saving a line graph as a highly compressed JPEG--it'll look like total crap and it's only done for convenience sake. There are more effective compression algorithms for "line art". Hell, some cartoons would look fine in 256 colours as well.

    There is also no need to fix the frame rate. Simpsons is generally shot on twos (that is--one drawing for every two frames, or 12 frames per second). There are exceptions of course. For example, when panning the artwork is moved and shot on ones (24 frames/sec), and if the animated character overlayed on the background must interact with an independently scrolling background the artwork will be done on ones as well (the intro is almost all shot on ones because of all the action). The video need not maintain 24 frames per second and could drop down to 12 much of the time (or 30 and 15, if a feature was shot direct to NTSC video, or 25/12.5 on PAL...)

    truly...I think you could watch nearly all of South Park over dial-up at broadcast quality...

    1. Re:Funny... by Zorilla · · Score: 1

      Well, I was being serious about it because they had to put the cartoon on video store shelves in a format that would play. I did find it kind of ridiculous that the Happy Tree Friends DVD was in 5.1 surround, which it fully utilized. That's something they probably concentrated on considering regular Flash cartoons tend to be around 11 kHz and not really use stereo that much.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  95. Super-Hyper-Extended LOTR edition by BlastQuake · · Score: 1

    When these come out the super-hyper-extended version of LOTR Will fit on only 3 of these! A full 2 months of nonstop goodness :D

    --
    "What use is power to the Keeps of Balance?" -Disnt of Nightmare LpMud
  96. An SEM? by purduephotog · · Score: 1

    Photo active chemical sites are generally created from a minimum of 4 photons up to ? number. As for quantitization, any number of techniques exist in the film world for causing only partial development of the grains- that means that instead of your static 1 and 0, you can get .5, 3/4, etc. Frankly any number in between.

    Sadly a film grain escapes my brain at this late hour, but I've used the SEMs to image custom made crystals that were about 5nm... but really, we're talking about different things.

    I'm talking about images made on high quality 35mm film and scanned in the thin side at 4K by 6K. In fact I've scanned 35mm chromes to 8k lpi and had them blown up to 40x60. Said image downsampled does not sufficiently retain the subtle details and shadings present in the higher resolution scans.

    Resizing the lower resolution up to the high one exhibits the same failures- not enough details.

    Yes you can use a crappy ass lense and 1600 speed film and find out that, whoa and behold, there is no detail to be gained at 4K resolution. But trade that for a nice rodenstock and some 25 speed Kodachrome and your eyes are in for a candy appled treat.

  97. Re:/.ed - text is here by aussie_a · · Score: 1

    Simpler solution: Stop making the fucking commentaries.

  98. Not news by greggman · · Score: 1

    This is old news except that Japan already did it and it's not 10 to 15 years away. more like 3 years away

    http://www.optware.co.jp/english/what_040823.htm

  99. Not enough.. by adeyadey · · Score: 1

    Im hanging out for the 4Tb DVD-R. When it hits 50 quid..

    --
    "You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
  100. IF YOU COULD STORAGE EVERY VIDEO, PICTURE FILE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.physorg.com/news785.html

    100 TERABYTE 3.5 INCH DISK